Three workers were killed and three others were badly hurt Thursday afternoon in an explosion on the edge of Kern County's Mojave airport during the test of a propellant system for a pioneering private spaceship. The blast occurred at a private test site run by Scaled Composites, a company founded by high-profile aviation entrepreneur Burt Rutan. In June 2004, the firm became the first business to launch a reusable manned rocket into space, a craft known as SpaceShip One.

An explosion and fire at a natural gas plant in southwestern Wyoming forced the evacuation of the nearby town of Opal, a plant spokeswoman said Wednesday. No injuries were immediately reported among the plant's 42 employees or anyone in Opal, about five miles away, which has a population of 98. Officials shut down neighboring highways after the mid-afternoon blast. Williams Companies Inc. owns the facility, which takes raw gas, processes it and ships it off in a pipeline. It's among several energy companies with operations in the area, company spokeswoman Michele Swaner told the Los Angeles Times.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide car bomber targeted a military contractor on the eastern outskirts of Kabul on Monday, killing at least one person and injuring 15 others, including foreigners, police said. It was one of at least two deadly explosions in Afghanistan on Monday. Ten girls were killed and two injured when a land mine detonated in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, authorities said. The girls, who were between the ages 9 and 11, disturbed the device while collecting firewood in a field outside Dawlatzai village in the Chaparhar district, according to the local area governor, Mohammed Sadiq Dawlatzai.

The deaths of 15 people, including 12 volunteer firefighters, in an explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant a year ago were preventable, federal investigators said Tuesday. Preliminary findings from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board on the chemical disaster in West, Texas, include: The firefighters should have been trained to deal with the stockpile of ammonium nitrate at West Fertilizer Co. State regulators should not have allowed the fertilizer to be stored in wooden containers. Local authorities should have considered keeping schools and homes farther away from the plant.

You don't need to wait for the news reports, or to be anywhere near a radio or television, to know that whatever happened at the finish line of Monday's Boston Marathon was a horrific event. Almost immediately, photographs taken in the vicinity of the explosion, or explosions, were disseminated on Twitter. You could see smoky air and injured runners down, tended by the uninjured. The sidewalk was bright red with blood. PHOTOS: Explosions at Boston Marathon You could see it all unfold on Twitter, graphically.

Three people were in critical condition with burns Thursday after a series of blasts and fires tore through two barges in Mobile, Ala. Officials reported a series of seven explosions on the Mobile Bay that started on one barge late Wednesday night, apparently setting two barges on fire. The flames were extinguished early Thursday morning. It's unclear if any of the explosions came from the second barge. The U.S. Coast Guard reported that one of the barges belonged to Kirby Inland Marine and said it was an empty compressed natural gas barge that had been docked for cleaning.

BEIRUT -- The toll from a pair of explosions outside two mosques in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday has risen to at least 29 with hundreds wounded, authorities said. The explosions appeared to be the latest in a series of attacks that have stunned Lebanon and stoked sectarian strife in the small but strategically situated Middle East nation, which endured a ruinous 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. Tripoli has seen numerous outbreaks of violence since civil war ignited in neighboring Syria two years ago. Gun battles between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the coastal city have cost dozens of lives.

Orange County prosecutors charged a 22-year-old Disneyland employee Thursday with possessing a destructive device in a public place in connection with two "dry ice" bomb blasts in the theme park's Toontown area. If convicted, Christian Barnes faces a maximum sentence of six years in state prison. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail, half of what he was held on when he was first booked by Anaheim police investigators. He is expected to plead not guilty when he makes his first court appearance Thursday afternoon in Orange County Superior Court.

Do Joss Whedon's kids go to Beverly Hills High School? I ask because the school district's parent teacher council recently came out with a video -- apparently made by parents of kids in the district, some of whom work in the entertainment industry -- intended to lay out their concerns about a proposal by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to route the so-called Subway to the Sea under Beverly Hills High. I saw Whedon's "The Avengers" over the weekend, but I think the Beverly Hills parents have come up with a fantasy-based film that's nearly as compelling; both have comic -book villains (Loki the Norse god in one, JMB Realty in the other)

The "chef" hunkered over a batch of hash oil he was making in a kitchen in Redondo Beach, using a common but extremely dangerous method known as "open blasting. " The 26-year-old meticulously stirred and heated the marijuana extract into the highest clarity, slowly producing "butane honey oil" that would be as clear and pure as amber. This potent type of hash, also called "wax," has taken off in the marijuana market with the rise of electronic cigarettes and other vaporizing devices.

Sarah Luna wants to buy a home in up-and-coming northeast Los Angeles before it's too late. At 31, she has a master's degree and earns more than $70,000 as a court reporter and freelance editor. She daydreams about trading the Glendale apartment she shares for a little condo, maybe in Echo Park or Highland Park. Just one thing holds her back: The $700 she's paid every month since 2008, after she graduated from the University of Southern California - with $75,000 in student debt.

A 15-year-old Newport Beach resident was detained Sunday on suspicion of attempting to sell 51 pounds of illegal explosives on Craigslist , authorities said Monday. After the Los Angeles County Fire Department 's arson unit seized illegal fireworks from a manufacturer in Glendora, authorities found similar explosives pictured in a Craigslist advertisement in the Newport Beach area, according to a news release. L.A. County fire authorities, with the help of Newport Beach police and fire departments and the Orange County Sheriff's Departmen's bomb squad, set up an undercover "buy-and-bust" operation at the teen's home over the weekend, according to Times Community News.

Marc Smutny was doing landscape work at Parkway RV Resort and Campground before 6 p.m. when he heard an explosion on the 5 Freeway. “I heard probably three explosions,” Smutny told the Los Angeles Times in a phone interview. Smutny had heard a FedEx big-rig careening head-on into a charter bus full of high school seniors from the Los Angeles area, killing nine people. The students were set to tour Humboldt State University. PHOTOS: 9 killed in L.A. student's deadly bus crash Both the drivers of the bus and the FedEx truck were killed.

April 9, 2014 | By Aoun Sahi, This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- At least 19 people were killed and about 50 injured when a high-intensity explosion ripped through Islamabad's crowded fruit and vegetable market Wednesday, police said. A witness said the explosion happened at about 8:10 a.m. during the peak business hour. [Updated, 7 a.m. PDT April 9: Later in the day, the death toll was raised to at least 23, according to Islamabad Police Chief Khalid Khattak. He said more than 100 people were wounded in the blast.

The 2014 Commonwealth Games will start with a bang -- a big bang -- as organizers have announced they will explode five nearby apartment buildings to kick off their opening ceremony. The violent demise of the crumbling, 30-story Red Road towers in Glasgow, Scotland, will be televised to a worldwide audience and shown on a 328-foot video screen for the crowd inside Celtic Park. "It will be a ceremony like no other, showcasing our city's unique style and personality," said Gordon Matheson, leader of the Glasgow City Council.

SACRAMENTO - Pacific Gas & Electric Co., indicted by the federal government for criminal behavior stemming from a Bay Area natural gas explosion that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes, still faces more trouble. In the next few months, PG&E will face the likelihood of a fine from the California Public Utilities Commission as high as $2.25 billion for its role in the September 2010 disaster in the city of San Bruno. On Tuesday, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco announced that a grand jury indicted PG&E on 12 alleged violations of the federal Pipeline Safety Act involving poor record keeping and faulty management practices.

SAN FRANCISCO -- In an age of near instant communication, Twitter again became the world's town square as traffic to the service spiked minutes after the deadly Boston Marathon explosions. People rushed to Twitter for real-time information on fatalities and injuries. It was the first to air the news of the explosions at the finish line (10 minutes ahead of cable news) and to break the news of multiple explosions and mass casualties as users posted firsthand accounts and photographs. Foursquare founder and Chief Executive Dennis Crowley, who was running the marathon to raise money for Camp Interactive, a program to expose underprivileged youth to technology, turned to Twitter to let friends and family know he was OK. (He also used it to ask journalists to "leave us alone right now. ")

Several explosions engulfed a chemical plant in flames, forcing a broad evacuation in Kansas City as the fire spewed a sticky substance that residents were warned not to touch. Two workers at Chemcentral Corp. suffered minor injuries, authorities said. Police drove up and down nearby streets warning that more explosions were expected, but the blaze began subsiding in late evening.

A Glendale man faces drug manufacturing charges after police raided a potentially explosive lab used to extract hash oil inside a garage. Detectives seized roughly 40 pounds of marijuana, approximately 181 cans of butane, three large tubes used for extraction and about 2 ounces of “butane honey oil” - also known as hash oil - inside Andrew Hedenberg's detached garage in the 800 block of North Glendale Avenue, police said. “The potential for explosion is huge,” police Sgt. Toby Darby told the Glendale News-Press . “These things are blowing up all over the place.” Two men suffered burn-related injuries last month in a suspected hash-oil explosion in the city of Commerce that set a home ablaze.

Utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric Co. was indicted Tuesday on a dozen felony counts connected to the massive 2010 pipeline explosion that killed eight people and ravaged a San Bruno, Calif., neighborhood. The utility was charged with violating federal pipeline safety laws, including failing to identify all potential threats to the aging, high-pressure line that sparked the disaster and not maintaining proper repair records, according to the indictment filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.